DJ Cut La Roc

Cut La Roc remembers the look on his mum’s face when he bought his first Technics. She was horrified! ‘You paid two hundred pounds for a record player?!’ And that was before she found I needed two! Well, Mrs La Roc, rest easy. Your son did the right thing. As if there was a choice. La Roc – real name Lee Potter – was already hooked by then. He was 15. He’d already got into bunking off school in Brighton to doss around with the local b-boys, already began to memorise their breakdancing moves and intricate scratch tricks. Needless to say, the second Technics followed soon after. Lee immersed himself in the world of hip hop, scratching and editing his productions on cheap samplers and battling it out at local jams.

Then something happened. Or rather, nothing very much happened at all. ‘All of a sudden, it must have been about 1987, and acid house came along…’ And Lee was seduced all over again. Which all casts a little light on the mixed up musical mind of Cut La Roc. And why his debut album ‘La Roc Rocs’ for Skint hoovers up everything from deft rap cut-ups to camped up jump-up jungle. Or Mills-esque techno pressure. And… Well, you get the picture. If anything, it’s a testament to the three years Lee has spent almost consistently DJing in Australia, America, across Europe and the Far East. Still, it’s in the UK where he’s caused the most damage, the two early EPs in his ‘Mad Skills’ series stand alongside Fatboy Slim, Midfield General and Bentley Rhythm Ace’s finest as the foundations the Skint empire was built on. In 2000 he released a mix album for the Ministry Of Sound’s FSUK imprint and set a his first world record for DJ’ing with 8 decks! His sets continued to be revelatory affairs too, Lee either turning on the showmanship by scratching with all manner of limbs or slapping down a wall-to-wall selection of party-stoking anthems.

Crowd-thrilling scratch tricks and a unique DJ’ing technique remain Cut La Roc’s speciality when he’s playing out and his DJ sets combine the best of old and new hip hop. No stranger to the big time, Cut had already appeared on Top Of The Pops as the late Wildchild’s DJ on the top ten hit ‘Renegade Master’. His critically claimed first album for Skint ‘La Roc Rocs’ was released in July 2000 featuring the hits ‘Freeze’, ‘Fallen’ and ‘Makin’ It Hot’. Among the legions of seamless fader-flippers who inhabit clubland, he sticks out as entertainer and vinyl conoisseur alike – a reputation that he is upholding even today